I first met Cecilia “C.S.” Pego in Artists’ Alley at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. A native of Mexico City, she was there to promote her new graphic novel, Exilia: The Invisible Path. I found it visually stunning, not to mention a welcome relief from all the soulless superhero stuff. In the first half of our...

Cecilia “C.S.” Pego established a reputation in her native Mexico as “La Diva de la Novela Grafica Mexicana.” Her characteristic use of bold blacks give her comics their graphic power. But her art continues to evolve in sophistication. Sardonia y Chamuco, her 1990s editorial strip, has an hallucinogenic, Skip Williamson–like underground comix intensity. Her jagged, spiky...

Other people build houses on land. Richart Sowa, a carpenter and former British rock-band guitarist, has designed and constructed a whole island. This self-sustaining environment for living, about 20 meters (66 feet) in diameter, floats just off Isla Mujeres, Mexico, on 115,000 empty plastic one-liter soda bottles anchored by 11 concrete-filled car tires. When...

It is estimated that the average worldwide per-capita use of paper is 110 pounds per person per year. On Isla Mujeres, Quintana Roo, a laid-back Caribbean island off the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula—best known for good snorkeling and for sipping a slow cerveza under a palapa—Emilio Sosa Medina recycles ten times his annual...